Colouring Between The Lines
by scuttlesworth
Summary: John after Sherlock. Just the bits between the Fall and the Grave.


He sees the fall and runs and is knocked over and gets up and runs and there are too many people in the way but he can see concrete and blood, very red blood, thick dark red blood, and black hair all sticky and white pointy nose and cheekbones oh god and he gets a wrist. Just by the fingertips. It's still warm. There's no pulse. The people, too many people he's saying he's a doctor why are they pushing him back so many hands and arms in the way when he can get there needs to get there needs to hold on please hold on please make this not be real please please please come back

He has a shock blanket. It's because he is very, very cold and can't seem to stop shaking. They have him on a bench because the ambulance is gone. Lestrade is there and he is white-faced and looks sick. Donnovan is there and she has turned grey-green but she says something vicious, something cutting, and John looks up and sees her. Lestrade winces, looks down at John with anxiety written all over his face. John looks over at Donnovan and just sits there. Coils. Waits. Lestrade relaxes. She comes over to Lestrade to report, only a minute later, and opens her mouth and John moves like he used to move before the shot and the limp and even before Sherlock, and the crack of his hand across her face echoes off the ambulance. She stumbles backwards and goes to one knee; it was that kind of slap. Lestrade has John's arms and is saying something in his rushing ears but John can't hear him. He can see Donnovan get up, a white then red imprint of his hand across her cheek and temple, and she's pointing and yelling something about having him arrested and Lestrade whirls on her and says "Consider yourself lucky you won't be suspended." John looks at her with deadly eyes and thinks, this is not entirely your fault but some of it is, and I do not forgive you.

Donnovan turns pale, turns her back, and stalks off with more speed than grace.

Anderson does not show up.

It'll have to be enough.

They patrolman sent up to check the jump site radios back. Dead body up there and a gun, he says. More police arrive and head up to the roof. It's a circus complete with flashing lights and crowds. John is suddenly very focused. Moriarity.

Up until now he's been assuming Sherlock was alone, that Sherlock lost somehow. Now there's something else and he feels a vicious desire to observe this upstairs corpse. He's seen the one, now he needs the other. He stands and follows Lestrade. No-one, seeing his face, has the nerve to object. They go up stairs and up more stairs and out a door and onto the tarpaper and gravel roof, crunching underfoot, and there's the body with a couple patrolmen standing about, and there's a gun and there's a broken phone and John needs to see the body first all the rest can wait. He heads over, cutting in front of Lestrade and ignoring everything except fine soft dark short hair and a tiny build, such a little body, almost a teenager's. So slight to contain all that malice. He crouches and takes the pulse at the wrist and it feels so different from Sh. From. It's limper, cooler, deader. He moves around to the face, completely indifferent to the officer who stumbles back out of his way with an oath.

The face is almost ruined. Almost. John, though, would recognize any part of this corpse. This man. His hands, half his nose, his shoulders, his shoes - anything. John stares at the one eye he can see which is bulging out of the skull from the shockwave of the gunshot and he feels both a terrible relief and a terrible grief, and he begins to snicker. He buries his face in his hands and crouches there, shaking with laughter, until someone makes him get up and go away.

Lestrade stops them before they leave the roof. "John. John, was it him?"

John can only nod. A patrolman walks him down, back to the bench to sit and wait some more.

Eventually they take his statement. He tries to tell the whole story. Watches them write it down to make sure they get it right. Then they offer, can we take you home? And he stares at them. No, they cannot take him home. He's not going home, is he? He's going into the morgue to see the other body.

Except he's not. He's standing in the hallway and Molly is turning three shades of red and white but she's refusing to let him in to see Sher no the no no John needs to see, needs to be there when Molly, when Molly cuts, when. Molly refuses. Refuses Lestrade. Refuses everyone who has followed John like he's the pied piper. Little Molly suddenly seeming to grow exasperated and a spine, and she snaps in her little voice that it's her Mortuary and she'll let who she needs in and not a single other person. She glares at them, her gaze changing to worried sympathy when it hits John, and she opens her mouth to say something but a fine line crinkles between her eyebrows and instead she shakes her head and reaches out to touch his arm. Her hand never connects. She closes her mouth and heads back through the doors and locks them behind her, John knows because despite what she said he tries them, and her face is full of something sad when she watches him through the little window. Then she's gone.

And Lestrade claps him on the shoulder and steers him stumbling back through the hospital and to a police car. Sticks him in the back of it. He stares out the window at London, it's gotten dark, when did it get dark? Dark is better. He doesn't want to see the city, the lights are good. He watches the lights until they get to Baker Street. Lestrade offers to come up. John says no. John leaves the shock blanket in the back of the police car, neatly folded.

Mrs. Hudson is waiting, her face so frightened. He just looks at her. She bursts into tears, and comes over and weeps on his shoulder, and it takes him forever to lift his arms and put them up to her back because he does not want to move. So tired.

She bundles him into her flat and gets him tea which he only barely tastes before putting it down. He lies on her sofa because he cannot go up the stairs to their flat and she drapes him with a blanket, another blanket now not orange but crocheted from little colorful squares. He lies there. All he sees all night long are black coats and concrete with blood and black curls and pale skin. All night long his fingers feel Sherlock's wrist and no pulse and Moriarity's wrist and no pulse and how different they were even in death.

When the morning light comes and the windows are pale enough to see the room, Mrs. Hudson is still asleep. He gets up. Folds her blanket and drapes it over the back of the sofa. Opens her front door carefully so it will not creak and closes it behind him. Steps on the stairs.

Each stair is as clear to his eyes as a thing under a magnifying glass. Every smudge, every scuff, stands out sharp as a blade. He can see them, all of them, and they are burning themselves into his mind, but he can make no sense of them. Is the scuff coming or going? Up or down? Shoe polish or the rubber from a coaster on a chair? That snag in the carpet, has it always been there? He goes up slowly, forced to see everything, unable to comprehend anything.

The living room is full of Sherlock. Already it smells disused, though. John stares about, tries to determine what he needs to do. He reaches out to move a glass which had liquid in it, sweated and left a ring on a book and he can't. Just can't touch it. His hand shakes like a leaf the closer it gets to the glass until he snatches it back and tucks it under his arm. So he goes to the kitchen. Stares about. Chemistry set. It's not on, there's no flame. Dead and cold and silent. John cannot think what to do in here either. He leaves.

Sherlock's room. John doesn't even go near it. That's an invasion of privacy he will not contemplate even now. He thinks vaguely that the police might come and check over the house, but why would they? Sherlock jumped. There's a crime there but not one which warrants a house inspection. If they do come there's always Mycroft.

Mycroft. John feels a sick lurch. Surely Mycroft knows by now. Surely Mycroft of all people will know. He always had them under surveillance. John shouldn't have to. Tell.

He can't stay here. The thought crystalizes in his mind. He can't touch anything here, and the things are going to grow dusty waiting for their owner to come back, and he can't watch that. He heads up to his room with a purposeful step.

Bedroom. Bag. Clothes. Socks, underwear, shirts, jumpers (oh that word), slacks, jeans, spare shoes. Laptop. Gun. Gun gun gun. Gun goes in the bag, John, but instead it goes in his jacket pocket. Just in case.

Bathroom: toothbrush, toothpaste, deodorant, shampoo, razor, painkillers, etc.

And that's all he has. Nothing else. One large duffel, fuller now than when he moved in but still with room to spare, and one small shoulder bag. He looks around. Did he sit so lightly here then?

There are other things he could take. Mugs and saucers and blankets and pillows. He leaves them. He goes downstairs. Looks around.

He takes one thing of Sherlock's. Carefully wraps it in his ugliest Christmas jumper, and sticks it in the center of his bag. It looks up at him as he wraps it, and he pats it gently. "It's all right," he says out loud in a rusty voice to it before he tucks the jumper sleeve over the empty eye sockets.

Now he's ready to go.

If only he knew where.

He ends up at Sara's. Not very far to flee, really. When he leaves the front of the house the press are starting in, pulling up outside. A couple cameras go off but he's got his jacket up and gets away unscathed, if not unphotoed. He was going to walk but the press are following, calling out just short of shouting, so he hails a cab. Has to give it an address then, and the only addresses he knows in London are all wrong - Barts no, NSY no, Baker Street he's at, too early for the pub and the pub is too close. Sara's it is, then.

He gets out on her front step and pays the cabbie and feels lucky he actually has the money for it, since he didn't check his wallet before he gave the address and there's barely twenty quid in there. He stands on Sara's doorstep in the middle of the morning, watching the cab drive off, and thinks: She'll be at work. He's already thinking of other places to go. But he's come this far, so he rings the doorbell anyways, and she answers, and he thinks: Oh, silly. She's not on shift. Have I woken her? And she just looks at him and reaches out and hugs him, and he doesn't react or cry, so she pulls him inside and there's more tea. And she says if he wants to talk about it. And he says thank you, politely, because she's being kind and means it, she'll listen, but he won't be talking about this at all.

He stays on her couch that night and the next. Then he finds another flat.

He can't bear her looking at him with such sympathy, as though he were about to burst into tears at any moment.

There is a funeral. He attends. Mrs. Hudson attends. Mycroft attends. Lestrade attends. Molly attends. A number of people John vaguely recognizes attend. John does not cry. He nods and talks to people politely. He does not remember what he says or what they say.

Molly watches him anxiously. He ignores her. They have nothing in common now except grief.

Mycroft appears in his flat a few days later, sitting in the only chair. Mycroft does not comment on the only decoration in the flat, which rests on the living room shelf. He has had the courtesy to make tea and set a cup out for John. There are biscuits too, John's favorite, which he has not been in the mood for lately. John nibbles on one politely anyways, perched on the edge of his bed while Mycroft pokes and prods and takes his emotional temperature. Checking up on him, John thinks, wondering exactly why Mycroft is bothering. Their only connection is utterly absent. He looks Mycroft over, noting that the man has gained a few pounds. Some people loose weight under stress, others gain it. Mycroft and Sh… his brother. Are. Were. So opposite.

After John stops responding and sits staring off at the wall near Mycroft's head for a good five minutes, half a biscuit dangling from his hand, Mycroft leaves. He looks unexpectedly sad, and angry.

Lestrade tries to come by. John is not at home.

John leaves the flat every day. He needs to walk. He walks compulsively, at all times of the day and night, in every part of London. Sometimes he visits Mrs. Hudson, but he never goes upstairs. Sometimes he visits Sarah, but he never stays the night. Sometimes he walks through the worst parts of town he can find. He wishes someone would try and mug him or glass him or vomit on his shoes, but even in the seediest parts of the city no-one ever does. He feels as though he has an invisible escort. Once or twice he thinks he spots them, people who just don't quite fit in the way he doesn't quite fit in. Men in coats which he's seen a few times, women wearing shoes which seem far too sensible for the rest of their outfits. He tries, whimsically, to loose them but instead he looses interest after a few minutes.

It is six months. He's working again at the clinic, but it barely occupies half his attention. His hands shake again but it doesn't matter; if he braces his wrists on something, he can still make perfectly even stitches. He hasn't got the limp back but he carries the cane regardless.

Things happen. Once a drunk comes in, aggressive, shouting. A nurse is trying to get him to sit still so she can check his pupils, see if he has concussion, and the man backhands her. Grabs her by the hair when she stumbles and starts to slam her into the wall. John is just outside the hall and he steps inside, punches the man neatly in the throat and catches the nurse. The man is choking, gurgling, clutching his throat while John carefully gets the nurse settled in a chair. Other nurses arrive. John orders the drunk restrained and waits while the man's face turns purple until his arms and legs and head are strapped to the table before leisurely performing a tracheotomy to get the man's airway open again.

The man vomits and the acid gets in the incision. John does not seem surprised or sympathetic when he hears. Contrary to his expectation, the nurses don't seem revolted by his lack of compassion for the patient. Instead, they are quite nice to him after that; there's something about someone who will do unquestioning violence for you that's attractive.

He goes to the grave only once. It is the only time he cries when he is awake.


End file.
